A Side-Effect Continued
by Alice J. Nightshade
Summary: Six months after Augustus' death, Hazel finds a book left at her door. Peter Van Houten's novel, Side-Effect, has found it's way to her, but this time its Gus' story he tells. How can she read about his life, falling in love and his final days? She's isn't strong enough to do this. Despite how she feels, Hazel owes it to Augustus to finish the story, even if there is no ending.


**Hello, Hello. This is a fan fiction I have no idea where it came from but it just did so here you are. I feel like this chapter isn't one of my best but hopefully they'll get better soon. Bear with me. **

**Disclaimer: I own nothing! **

It had been a day much like any other when I found the package wrapped up in old brown paper and tied off with string leaning against her front door. In the right corner written in dark blue pen was a scribbled address and nothing more, leaving the sender and who is belonged to both the sender and who was meant to receive it a mystery.

I knelt down to pick it up with both hands, the tubes of my oxygen tank brushing against my shoulder while I crouched and tried to decipher the hand writing. The words were slanted as crooked, bunched together in some places and completely crossed out in others. The only thing that could be read clearly was written at the very bottom.

Do not throw this away Hazel.

Okay? Hazel thought strangely then went cold. No, not okay. Nothing could ever be okay. Not ever again.

Only six months ago, Augustus Water's heart stopped, overworked and tired from a lengthy battle with cancer which he fought bravely till the end. That is what the obituary had wrote in the paper. That the fight was too much for him but he'd never stopped fighting bravely. There was no mention of the thin boy who needed a wheelchair to move around in, the boy who Hazel had found in his bed, surrounded in his own urine, the boy who'd sat outside the Speedway at Eighty-Six and Ditch and finally broke down and wanted it to all be over. None of this was written in the paper however, nothing about the Augustus Waters that I had fallen in love with, just the boy that fought Cancer bravely.

I bit my lip and looked up, half hoping that maybe I'd see those startling blue eyes that had never once changed during all the time they'd spent together, no matter how ill he'd seemed. Mom was starting to think I was putting this behind me, that I was getting better and living just like she and my dad wanted. But I wasn't.

The thing about losing someone you loved, especially the love of all be your short existence, is that it just doesn't get better. You don't wake up one day and see the works as a sunny place and everything is alright again. The pain doesn't fade, it's always there demanding to be felt and noticed. Like my lungs. Someday a they're better and I can pretend that things are alright, but then they contract and squeeze and I would know that they're not getting better. They're still there sucking at what they're supposed to do. That's like pain, it doesn't go away and you just learn to cope.

I unlocked the front door with my key and heard my mother call out.

"Hazel? Is that you?"

I thought about replying with a witty and sarcastic comment, but I just didn't have it in me. "Yeah, it's me."

She came into the room with her arms filled with white papers. For the past few months she'd been working much more openly for her master's degree in social work, which gave us both more time to spend a bit more freely. Sometimes she let me go out without her constant following and sometimes I helped her out with her homework.

"Hi Sweetie," She smiled and attempted to move he papers to one arm so she could give me an awkward hug, but I beat her to it, my thin arms surrounding her larger healthier frame. "How was Kaitlyn's?"

"British," I reply with a real smile. Since I'd lost one of the people I loved most in the world, I'd made a point of hanging out with Kaitlyn much more often. I'd even introduced her to Isaac, who not too soon after meeting her asked her out on a date and have been together ever since.

"Can't hold out forever, can I?" He'd said when I'd asked him about it a few weeks ago.

"Good," Mom smiled at me and ruffled my dark hair. I hadn't let it grow out much, still sporting the mid-2000's Natalie Portman haircut that I'd come to appreciate more over the months. "It's good that your spending time with you'd friends." Translation, thank god you're not falling apart after Gus's death.

"Yeah," I moved the package into my hand and held it slightly behind me but Mom's eyes zoomed in on it instantly

"What's that?" I held it out for her to see but not too closely.

I shrugged. "I found it outside. It's for me."

This may have not been necessary true, but it said do not throw this away_ Hazel_ so I doubt it was meant for anyone else.

"I'm going to go work on some homework," I told her, grabbing Phillip and made my way to my room. I had just sat down on my bed when I heard my mother knock and enter without waiting for an answer.

"Hazel," She said hesitantly and sat down next to me on my bed. Her face was anxious and she placed a hand on my boney collarbone as if to steady herself.

"Mom?" I asked after a beat of awkward silence. I had a feeling where she was going with this but I really hoped I was wrong.

"You've been so strong these past few months," She started, speaking in a soft voice she'd used when I was younger and throughout the years when she'd wanted me to succumb to a strange medical treatment. "I'm sure Gus would-"

"Mom," My voice broke but I willed it to stay strong. "Please-"

She kept going. "I just want to say how proud I am. I know that you love Gus and I'm proud that you've kept going these past few months. I'm sure he would be too and he'd be happy."

I don't know what to say to her about that, I just stare at her until she leans over and pulls me into a bone crushing hug, just like he used to.

"I love you, Hazel." She whispered, planting a kiss on my forehead before she stood and walked out of the room, leaving me alone with her words and the brown paper package behind me.

I turned around and picked up the package again, rotating it over in my hands and looking it over as if it might have changed in the past five minutes. But no, nothing had changed. The package was still the same.

I took a deep breath and then untied the strings around it. Someone had done an excellent job tying it because it took me a good two minutes before the string finally fell away and only the paper was left.

For a second, I didn't want to open it. I felt like this was something big, that this was one of those moments that would change my entire outlook on life. Like finding out there were tumors in my lungs or realizing that I was unconditionally in love with Augustus Waters. Life-changing.

However, that moment of anxiety ended and curiosity got the better of me. I ripped off the paper quickly, until strips of it were hanging around me and my bed and the floor and in my hands was...

A book?

It was a hardcover book with a black cover, so dark it almost had a bluish sheen to it. Small patches of white glowed in random places across the cover giving the appearance of stars at night and written across the front in elegant blue script was the title.

A Side-Effect.

I dropped the book like it was on fire and kicked it away from me for good measure. _This isn't happening_, I thought, wrapping my arms around me. _This isn't happening_.

Only two people I knew would ever refer to anything as a mere side-effect and one of them was dead. That meant that the other person had written and delivered this book to me, knowing exactly how I would react to it. Hurt, upset and, pissed as hell.

Peter Van Houten.

I hadn't seen or heard from the famous drunken author since that day I'd found him inside my mother's car. He hadn't written anything to me or anything else I'd assumed (I'd stopped looking.) I hadn't even picked up an Imperial Affliction since then.

No. I stood up from my bed and stomped over to where I'd kicked the book, a mere three feet away but still. It was opened to its title page, where sure enough Peter Van Houten's name sat, glaring at me unforgivingly.

"What the hell?" I swore, glaring down at the pages in front of me. Was this some kind of sick joke he was playing on me? Why?

I slammed the book shut and shook my head. Van Houten didn't want me to throw it away, well too bad. This was going to go straight into the trash.

I flipped the book over so I wouldn't have to look at his name or the words Side-Effect when I saw something that made me freeze.

Augustus Waters.

There didn't seem to be enough air in the world. It always seemed like that to me, but at that moment the air supply was extremely lacking. No matter how many mouthfuls I took it seemed like nothing was working. _My lungs are shutting down,_ I thought. _I'm dying. _

But I kept standing and my lungs kept being lungs and blood kept pumping through my veins. And finally, I read.

My name is Augustus Waters, I'm seventeen and I am on a roller coaster that only goes up. Augustus Waters is a cancer survivor and despite the loss of his leg and a lifetime of uncertainty, he lives his life to the fullest. And when meets a girl who is dying and always will be, his views of life are twisted and changed. How can two teens under cancer's mighty hold survivor the tribulations and harsh coldness of a world where they are just side-effects? The only way they can, together.

I didn't even know how to react to this. This...monster had wrote out our love life into a freaking book? For what? What the hell would he be getting out of this? It was sick. This was a sick, sick joke played one both of us. Me and Augustus.

"Damn you." I whispered, watching as tears dropped down onto the cover of the book. I hadn't even realized I was crying but I made no move to wipe the tears as they streamed down my face. "Damn you. Damn everything. Damn. Damn. Damn."

I stood there for a long time after that. Damning everything and anything. I damned Van Houten for writing this book about us, I damned cancer for taking away Gus and giving me lungs that wouldn't work or just stop being lungs, I damned the world for letting all of this happen. And after all this, it still left me alone in my room with the book still in my hands.

I know it seemed stupid and that the last thing I should do was adhere to what a drunken douche bag author wanted, but at that moment I knew that I had to read this. There was a reason that Van Houten wrote this and sent it to me, there had to be a reason, there always was a reason.

The thing about pain was that it demanded to be felt. Maybe this was just a way for pain demanding to be felt, maybe it wasn't. Either way, the end result was still the same. I sat back down onto my bed, opened the book and began to read the story of my star-crossed love.

**Dun, dun, dun. I am a girl of many cliff hangers, and who enjoys when people tell me how I did. Please tell me what you thought of this chapter, likes, dislikes, etc, etc.**


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